Making good print shop decisions is exactly like other business decision. It’s something that can be taught, studied and learned.
This happens every day. People are constantly making decisions on a good business venture, on day-to-day activities, on life. It’s the same in the printing business. Owners try to make the best decision and study the outcome so they can make new decisions. During these tough economic times, more people are studying everything, the business, income, productivity and outcome.
They’re paying hard attention to marketing and advertising, which in turn as an impact on us printers.
Right now, creativity is important to printers. Printing businesses have to be in order to be successful. Creativity plays a key role in keeping old customers and adding new ones. You will need a lot of creativity to resell the same product to the same customers. It’s something you have to do. That’s because – thanks to the Internet – customers have the luxury to look elsewhere for pricing and other things.
How is Buying a Car Like Making a Print Buying Decision?
An example of this is buying a used car. Usually, a customer goes to about three dealerships to find the car he or she wants. Ideally, if they have more time, they would go to every dealership and check out all the cars. They look at price, performance, durability, repair issues, and mileage (especially mileage). Once they find a car that meets their expectations in all these areas, they buy it.
You need these tiebreakers in these decisions. That’s how we do our business now. In the past, we would measure ourselves by the month. Now it’s daily.
It’s like a coach analyzing a football game. Did we execute? Did we do enough to win the game? Did our players make the plays, or did they make mistakes. If we can find our mistakes and avoid them, we’ll have good days. Put together enough good days and we have a good month.
You win quotes, you win customers. Also ask yourself many questions. Why didn’t we get the job? Was it our price? Too high or too low? Did we make enough phone calls? Were our quotes done in time?
This is no longer a quarterly, or even monthly, question to ask. We need to ask it daily. We have to move faster and see what we can do differently.
What kinds of questions are you asking yourself?
